


Marriage and Magic

by aliencupcake



Category: Original Work
Genre: Arranged Marriage, Fae & Fairies, First Meetings, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-27
Updated: 2016-08-27
Packaged: 2018-08-11 07:18:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7881862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aliencupcake/pseuds/aliencupcake
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When a surprise visitor shows up, Prince Leopold can no longer ignore his upcoming arranged marriage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Marriage and Magic

**Author's Note:**

  * For [youtomyme](https://archiveofourown.org/users/youtomyme/gifts).



The key to surviving an arranged marriage was pretending that it wasn’t happening at all. If you ignored your betrothed with enough force of will, they would cease to exist in any meaningful way. Leopold understood perfectly the realities of his station and had accepted the marriage would happen, yet his acceptance was merely a technical thing and not something he’d absorbed into his heart.

When his eyes drifted to the surface of the pond, the water stared back at him, blankly. He kept walking, watching the lily pads and their white water lilies. They said nothing to him; flowers didn’t speak, though Leopold wished they’d give him some advice. As Leopold lost himself in thoughts of the future, a breeze blew across the water, rippling the flat surface, making the lily pads and water lilies bob, disrupting the stillness.

Unlike the lilies, the breeze seemed to whisper, and Leopold wondered if that were Prince Deverell’s family come to get the measure of him. Even if they were fae-touched, that sort of spying didn’t seem proper. If Leopold had to approach this marriage with dignity and grace befitting his station, his betrothed ought to do the same. Sending family to tease him with whispers on the wind didn’t fit Leopold’s definition of proper, though maybe those with fae blood saw nothing strange about such carefree use of magic.

Leopold had bodyguards, hidden among the trees, though mere mortals couldn’t fight the wind.

“Is anybody out there?” Leopold immediately felt foolish and hoped the hidden guards wouldn’t gossip about his disintegrating mind.

The wind, contrary force of nature that it was, went silent, almost too still. All sound departed from the garden, sliding away, to be replaced by vibrating nerves throughout Leopold’s body. He told himself the wind was allowed to do what it liked, leave whenever it wished, and this had nothing to do with him. Prince though Leopold was, mortals tried to command nature at their peril.

Silvery lights twinkled above the water, over a cluster of lily pads and water lilies. Leopold squinted at the strange display; he saw no source for those lights, nor a reason for one lily to be so much larger than the others. It defied reason, and someone would have noticed such an improbably-sized flower if it had existed before. The palace’s head gardener would have boasted about his skills if he’d been able to grow such improbable water lilies.

“Don’t bewitch me.” Leopold didn’t care if his guards thought him mad for shouting at a flower; he could not remain silent in the face of such strangeness. He sensed one of the guards come closer, as if they too could see the mysterious lights and strange flower, so perhaps Leopold didn’t appear mad after all.

The lights multiplied, the cluster growing denser, each dot of illumination blurring into the next one until Leopold couldn’t tell them apart. The cluster’s edges sharpened, the gathering of lights shaping itself into a glowing outline of a man with long hair standing in the center of that improbable water lily. Nobody could mistake that shape for something else, and men, or the outlines of them, did not appear over water for any natural reason.

While the shape of the figure was undeniable, its reason for being there was much less clear. Leopold suspected the fae but could not say for certain; he hoped his guards could defend against the figure if it revealed malicious intent as Leopold himself knew he was powerless against the figure, frozen where he stood by its beauty.

Defying nature yet again, the shining, featureless figure dimmed and sharpened further, becoming less a being of pure magic and more like an ordinary man, one that could almost have been mistaken for a mundane human like Leopold was. It - he - was far too pretty to be mundane, his hair, falling halfway down his back, the same silvery shade as the lights that had formed him. He wore a crown of white rose blossoms; his shimmering midnight blue tunic matched his eyes and both looked like magic, as did his lithe body, which Leopold lingered on far longer than manners would allow, and dark golden skin.

If Leopold pushed his imagination to its limits, he might say the figure on the water resembled the portrait he had received of his betrothed, though that portrait was a poor reflection. The man, whom Leopold hesitated to name as Deverell, stepped out of the giant water lily, onto a lily pad. He hopped from lily pad to lily pad, never falling into the water, and Leopold doubted Deverell needed them to traverse the surface.

“State your purpose,” the guard beside Leopold said.

“Forgive my breach of protocol. I know this is terribly irregular, but I mean no harm and simply wished to speak with Prince Leopold. We are to be married, and I thought it best to meet before the ceremony,” said Deverell as he landed on solid ground.

Before Leopold could recover and respond to that pronouncement, Deverell appeared in front of him and took Leopold’s hand in his own, lifting it and pressing a delicate kiss to Leopold’s wrist.

Such light contact should not have sent sparks racing along Leopold’s skin, and yet he needed a moment before he could speak. Finally, he said, “It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

That was close enough to a proper response, or so Leopold hoped. It did not strike him as especially fair that his betrothed would show up unannounced while being so unnaturally beautiful.

“The pleasure is all mine, thank you,” Deverell said as he released Leopold’s wrist. It was the sort of rote response anyone would give, yet Leopold smiled at it anyway.

“Please excuse my lack of hospitality. Your portrait did not prepare me for your arrival. You are so much brighter than a painting, when I had heard it was usually the other way around.”

Deverell laughed, the sound as bright as the rest of him. “You flatter me, though I must disagree that portraits always improve someone’s appearance. Your eyes are a much warmer brown in reality, and, perhaps this is merely the difference in fashion between our people, but I like your copper curls better when they’re not flattened with gallons of oil.”

It hadn’t taken gallons to style Leopold’s hair for the portrait, though he said nothing, nor did he say anything about being caught so underdressed without the excuse of having fae blood and a culture with more relaxed standards of covering.

“Would you like to see the garden? It may not be entirely proper, but I would prefer to base our union, and that of our respective peoples, on something other than good looks, though I must confess I do appreciate yours.”

“That would be lovely.” Deverell offered Leopold his hand, and Leopold gladly accepted.

Some might have said that hand-holding was a scandalous amount of physical contact, yet Leopold didn’t care. He did care that his guards were sworn to secrecy unless it was a matter of security, and Deverell seemed unlikely to hurt him. Leopold guided them to a stone path, one wide enough for them to walk side by side, hand in hand.

They walked along that path; it was lined with blooming hawthorn hedges though Leopold concentrated more on Deverell than on any of the flowers. He barely remembered to point out he knew he was failing as a guide, but he regained enough sense when they reached the rose garden, if only because there was a large rosebush with blossoms like those on Deverell’s crown.

“I would put a flower in your hair, but I fear that would be redundant. These roses, bred to have no thorns, match those already in your crown,” said Leopold.

Deverell let go of Leopold’s hand and plucked one of the roses for himself, though his crown had no need of more. Instead of adding the blossom to that crown, he placed it behind Leopold’s ear. 

“Now we match. Forgive my impropriety, but I have something else to give you as well.” Deverell leaned in, hovering inches from Leopold’s face as if waiting for permission.

Leopold didn’t step back, and Deverell kissed him, a quick and gentle press of lips to lips.

“How was that?” said Deverell.

“Wonderful.”

Leopold had a feeling their marriage would be wonderful as well.


End file.
